With Buffett, Druckenmiller, Tepper, Dalio, and PTJ all positioning defensively, the smartest money is flashing a warning the market refuses to hear.

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Microsoft has cut its sales targets for its agentic AI software after struggling to find buyers interested in using it. In some cases, targets have been slashed by up to 50%, suggesting Microsoft overestimated the potential of its new AI tools. Indeed, compared with ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, Copilot is falling behind, raising concerns about Microsoft’s substantial AI investment.

Microsoft was an early investor in many of the latest AI companies. It ended up with a serious stake in OpenAI and benefited from early access to its models, creating Bing Chat and Copilot when Google, Meta, and Anthropic were just getting started. But now its momentum has stalled, and like everyone else, it’s not making much money from its AI products. That’s because no one is buying them, and that is because very few people actually find them useful, The Information reports.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/microsoft-scales-back-ai-goals-because-almost-nobody-is-using-copilot

The US labor market is coming to a halt:

The total nonfarm hiring rate fell -0.2 percentage points in October, to 3.2%, the lowest since the 2020 pandemic bottom.

Over the last 4 years, this figure has declined -1.4 percentage points, to levels in-line with December 2008.

By comparison, during the 2001 recession, the hiring rate was much higher, at 3.7%-4.0%.

Furthermore, the private hiring rate fell to 3.5% in October, the lowest since January 2011 and in-line with the 2020 lows.

The US labor market has stalled.